Inside the Star

Will politics wreck Wrecking Ball?

Art openings, typically, have an air of celebration, fuelled by accomplishment and, in most cases, no small amount of bulk-quality wine being consumed. This Thursday at the Koffler Centre for the Arts, it's reasonable to expect a dearth of the former, and because of it, quite possibly significantly more of the latter.

Art openings, typically, have an air of celebration, fuelled by accomplishment and, in most cases, no small amount of bulk-quality wine being consumed. This Thursday at the Koffler Centre for the Arts, it's reasonable to expect a dearth of the former, and because of it, quite possibly significantly more of the latter.

Wrecking Ball, the Centre's big summer group show, will open four artists short of its intended roster. Gwen MacGregor, Ed Pien, Sharon Switzer and Yvonne Singer will all be notably absent as an act of solidarity with Reena Katz, the artist whose installation, each hand as they are called, was disowned by the Centre last month.

What has followed has been an ever-escalating rhetorical war. Katz, who is politically active in various human-rights movements, describes herself as a conscientious objector to Israel's military presence in Gaza; the Centre points – repeatedly, and publicly – to Katz's association with the group Israel Apartheid Week as evidence that she "rejects the existence of Israel as a Jewish state" – a statement which Katz categorically rejects.

But in the wider art community, the complaint is much simpler. "It really speaks to fundamental issues about freedom of expression and freedom of association," says MacGregor. "It's the thin edge of the wedge, in terms of censorship, and that's a slippery slope."

Other artists, like Evan Tapper and Rafael Goldchain, have remained in Wrecking Ball, with reservations strongly expressed. ("I wrote to the Koffler to express my profound disappointment," Tapper says in an email. "I desperately want something positive to come out of this.")

The fallout extends past this week's opening. Nina Levitt, who was to have a solo show of her work put on tour by the Koffler, has threatened to pull the show from Koffler unless the centre publicly apologizes to Katz, and tries to repair the damage to her reputation.

Beyond that, there is another question, about what constitutes proper conduct of an institution that receives more than $100,000 in government funding every year (an additional $250,000 is provided by the United Jewish Appeal Federation of Greater Toronto).

The Toronto Arts Council, which provides $50,000 of that funding, has taken the issue to its board. "We're asking (Koffler) if this signals a change in policy," said Claire Hopkinson, TAC's executive director. "We're taking it very seriously."

Recently, a letter sent to Koffler, signed by dozens of OCAD professors, decried their decision. "(Y)our decision" to dissociate with Katz, they wrote "is a highly political act that serves to discredit Katz, her work and the validity of the political views and opinions she may hold as a Jew, an artist, and a social citizen."

At the centre of all this is Katz's work, a gentle exploration of the layers of multi-ethnic immigrant history in Kensington Market, played out on the market's streets in performance and, in one notably warm-fuzzy intervention, a game of mah jongg between members of a Jewish seniors' centre and a class of Grade 8 students at a nearby school.

"It was basically going to be a propaganda project for them – where Jewish culture was going to look great, and sweet and downtown and hip," said Katz recently. More than a month later, Katz, garrulous and thoughtful ("Reena's the kind of artist who always wants to talk everything out, all the time," says each hand's curator, Kim Simon) still has an incredulous air when speaking about the situation. "But it doesn't matter what the work is about. It's about their iron law."

The parties only speak through lawyers now, sorting out Koffler's contractual obligation to the project; Koffler cut off lines of communication without warning after it issued its public statement May 12.

"Every institution has to be true to its core values," says Koffler director Lori Starr. "Accepting Israel as a Jewish state is one of our core values. It's as simple as that." Starr says Koffler has let Katz and Simon keep the funding, and that mounting the project is up to them; Starr said she hopes it reaches fruition.

Yvonne Singer doesn't believe it. "I knew right away it would scuttle the whole thing," says Singer, a former Koffler board member who resigned over the flap. "You can't dissociate like that, and reasonably expect it to survive."

Singer recalls a meeting of Koffler's arts advisory committee May 1, where Starr informed members she had discovered Katz's political affiliations on her Facebook page. She was preparing a statement, and solicited opinions. "Several of us objected," Singer says. "The exhibition had nothing to do with (Katz's) political views, and in any case, she had a right to them as a citizen."

Then, Singer was called to an emergency board meeting May 4, when members were asked to review a statement Starr had prepared, disowning Katz's work. Singer objected, but the majority ruled. "They felt some kind of stand had to be taken," she said.

The stand could reflect a growing unease within a local Jewish community that, with its surfeit of Holocaust survivors, ties its identity more closely to Israel than almost any other in the diaspora, according to Derek Penslar, director of the University of Toronto's Jewish Studies program.

"It's a community that's really tied to the past," says Penslar. "There are a lot of ways to be Jewish, but in the official Jewish community here, with regards to Israel, there isn't a lot of leeway."

For an art institution that accepts public money, a different measure has to apply, says Rafael Goldchain. "When you're committed to an exhibition, you don't pull out – unless you're Jesse Helms," he said. Goldchain describes himself as a supporter of the Jewish state, "but I'm willing to have an argument about it. I wouldn't just close the door."

He thinks Koffler overstepped. "They have to understand (that) when you take money from the Ontario Arts Council, or the Canada Council, that not everything that goes on the gallery walls will be palatable to them."

For her part, Starr is trying to use the circumstance as an opportunity. "Dialogue and engagement are also part of the Koffler's core values," she says. "Hopefully, over time, there will be a deeper understanding of the decision we made, and why it was a the right decision."

For the broader arts community, that seems unlikely. For Katz, it's impossible. "The whole thing is so ugly," she sighs. "I'm devastated at how polarized it's become. What I can't understand is why we never had the chance to talk about it. Isn't that what art is about?"